January 22, 2014

Winston Peters is not that unpopular

Outlining which parties National could work with, Mr Key said he would prefer to continue working with Act, the Maori Party and United Future after this year’s election but could add Colin Craig’s Conservative Party.

However, he would not rule out NZ First.

From the 2011 NZES, a ranking of how unlikable New Zealand’s political leaders are:

This will have jumped around a little bit since then. John Banks will be even more unpopular than Don Brash, and whoever takes over ACT will start off at at-least Brash like levels of public opprobrium. Peter Dunne will now be very unpopular (funny the way Dunne ‘negotiated’ his Revenue Minister portfolio as part of a post-election deal but now gets doled out Conservation, Associate Health and Internal Affairs as part of a standard government reshuffle, just like any other National MP. Another sign that the United Future ‘Party’ is just another of National’s Potemkin parties.)

I assume Colin Craig is at Brash/Harawira heights of loathing or higher.

Peters was only slightly more unpopular in 2008 (41%). If you’re going to rule in Colin Craig, Peter Dunne and ACT then you might as well suck it up and rule in Winston Peters as well. It’s not going to cost you anything and it might mean you get to be Prime Minister for another three years.

If this is bad news for anyone I’d say its bad news for Colin Craig. Older crankier, racister soft-National voters can vote for New Zealand First safe in the knowledge that they’re not explicitly voting for a Labour-led government.

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“funny the way Dunne ‘negotiated’ his Revenue Minister portfolio as part of a post-election deal but now gets doled out Conservation, Associate Health and Internal Affairs as part of a standard government reshuffle, just like any other National MP”

Yes, a thousand times yes. What the fuck?

“Just a like a McDonalds limited time offer” – This (paraphrased) sound bite from David Cunliffe on RNZ this morning further cements him as my current most disliked leader.

Well, he was already Associate Conservation Minister and Associate Health Minister before he resigned. So, after his time in the naughty corner, he’s basically lost Revenue and gotten Internal Affairs instead. It’s probably just what was available to give Peter Dunne his old career politician salary back. Apparently Chris Tremain (former Minister of Internal Affairs) is retiring at the upcoming election.

Internal Affairs seems a weirdly risky choice given recent events, though. From Stuff: “I am very much looking to returning to the Internal Affairs portfolio [–snip–] including working with the Government chief information officer in the modernisation and upgrading of the Government’s IT services, and in particular ensuring proper protection for privacy and security of personal information.”

Who knows what that actually means given the contrast between what he allegedly did and what he ended up voting for.

Man, I remember when we threw a Potemkin party in my student days in Dunedin. Everyone came dressed as their favourite Soviet admiral, and at the end of the night we tipped a pram full of empty Kristov bottles down the steps of St Paul’s Cathedral. I wish United Future was more like that, and less like our counterrevolutionary running dog of a neighbour who called noise control.

For this chart to be remotely useful, you need to break down the percentage by party vote affiliation.

My expectation would be that the non-ruling-out of Peters matters more than the other leaders, because there is likely to be large chunk of voters who dislike him that are National party-voters. By contrast, I would expect that most/all of those who dislike Dunne are Lab/Gre voters, so there is little downside to National working with He of Glorious Hair.

Actually yeah, on a second look I’m quite amazed that Russel Norman drew fewer Dislikes than anyone else on that list. Especially given how many people now appear to hate his guts in principle, or at least think he’s an idiot wanting to print money, or cite the latter to justify the former and then mix it with a claim that he’ll certainly be the Minister of Finance should Labour be running the next government.

The depiction of the Greens as crazy and dangerous is a meme the corporate media has been trying to generate for a while now, as they realise that the Green Party has a good chance of destroying the neoliberal agenda for NZ.
As the Green MPs show reason, good manners and discipline in house debates, it’s hard for this to catch on with the public.
The crazies are on the right.

I, for one, would be very surprised if Russel Norman were ever the Minister of Finance under a Labour-led government. Nothing comparable has happened since Jim Bolger caved and allowed Winston Peters to be Treasurer for a couple of years after that election (with Bill Birch remaining as MoF), but everyone’s learned a lot about MMP, and making useful coalitions, since then.

Yes perhaps. I’m not sure it’s automatic, though, and as GregorW points out the Green Party aren’t in the best position to barter for everything. Right now it still needs Labour to have a hope of doing anything. Meanwhile, Peter Dunne, in 2005, managed to keep the Green Party completely out of Cabinet whilst scoring his own Ministerial position, despite his party only having half as many seats at the time. But Labour needed him, and realistically the Green Party also needed him if it was going to be able to have any influence on policies it cared about.

I’d never say never because strange things have happened, but I seriously can’t see the Labour Party treating Russel Normal as being appropriately qualified to be a full-on Minister of Finance. As importantly, I don’t think the Green Party would expect him to be, either. He’s their Finance spokesperson because the GP needs to have a Finance spokesperson, but can anyone point to any official GP sources which express an intent for him to be a future Minister of Finance?

Maybe he’d be given some kind of dumbed down Associate MoF position in which he’s not solely responsible for any substantial decisions.

It was about one month ago that John Key stated that Colin Craig says outrageous things and you have to be wary that that’s the kind of politician he is. So Key’s saying that he could add Craig as a coalition partner? I used to think it was the minor parties that were the political prostitutes, now I feel it may be the other way around.

Does it matter if 60-70% of the country absolutely loathes you if more than 5% thinks you’re worth voting for? In the case of somebody like Peters or Craig, at times they revel in their unpopularity as a way of shoring up the loyal base.

“Meanwhile, Peter Dunne, in 2005, managed to keep the Green Party completely out of Cabinet whilst scoring his own Ministerial position, despite his party only having half as many seats at the time. ”

I thought it was Winston Peters who did this. Dunne did not have the leverage to do so. Labour needed Winston to form any government and they could take the Green support for granted. Also the Labour caucus – from the highest to the lowest – deeply distrusted the Greens and continued to do so throughout that term. They were not unhappy Winston made it a condition of the deal.

Why would the Greens want the Minister of Finance’s job? I would have thought economic development, energy, foreign affairs and trade, maori affairs, conservation, environment or primary industry were more attractive. I don’t see anyone in the Greens with the mental bandwidth and people skills to be a successful Finance Minister in a first term coalition with Labour, even if they have the grunt to demand the job. Maybe in a second term perhaps?

I think they gave Dunne internal affairs because he’s held the position before.

Anyway, there are some hefty assumptions in this post, chiefly that both Craig and a new ACT leader must be loathed. Is there a reason to guess this, other than that the author doesn’t like their parties?

Re: the Greens thing, there has been a lot of argument on this blog over the degree to which the Greens need Labour and Labour need the Greens. Many have outlined scenarios in which the Greens withdraw support from Labour, leading to a National-led minority government taking power, and are rewarded for it by the voters (despite the National-led government implementing policies Green voters dislike). I find this scenario implausible – or at least, the last part implausible.

Usually minor parties don’t get very good portfolios, but it’s been a long time since a minor party in government had a decent share of the vote – both National and Labour have preferred to get into bed with minnows. The last time a party with a substantial share of the vote was in coalition it was NZ First post 2005, and they did indeed get a major portfolio – Foreign Affairs. So it’s at least conceivable that a Green party with a big share of the vote (10%+) could demand a very weighty cabinet portfolio, although Labour would fight tooth and nail to hang on to Finance.

The Greens would hate Finance. Finance would be bound by collective responsibility across government —- because, after all, Finance must be willing to back every dollar spent, otherwise it’s a disaster. And Labour would have a majority both on the Cabinet committee and Cabinet as a whole. So the Labour Associate Finance minister (i.e David Parker) would write policy, sign it off at Cabinet, and then the Green Finance minister would have to front it.

On the other hand, Deputy PM is a pretty plausible role for the Greens.